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Republic in the Family of Nations:" 
A SERMON 



DFLIVEKED AT 



THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 



WASHINGTON, D. C, 



BY THK PASTOK, 



Rev. BYRON SUNDERLAND, D. D., 



SABBATH, JULY 5TH, 1885, 



WASHINGTON, D. C. : 
R. O. POI.KINHORN * SON'. I'ttivrFW;. 
1885. 



Our Republic in the Family of Nations 
A SERMON 



DFLIVERED AT 



THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 



W A S H I I^ G T (^N , D . . , ^"5 ®E^< 






HV THE PASTOR, ■. , , 



Rev. BYRON SUNDERLAND, D. D., 



SABBATH, JULY 5TH, 1885 



WASHINGTON, D. C. : * 

K. O. POLKINIIORN & SON, PRINTKKS. 
1885. 



Washington, D. C, July 9, 1885. 
Rev. Byron Sunderland, D. D. : 

Dear Sir: Your sermon of last Sabbath, appropriate to the anni- 
versary of American independence, has been an especial subject of 
gratified comment among those who were so fortunate as to hear it. 
Believing that its impressive and eloquent exhibit of the lessons of our 
country's history should be in a form for preservation and general cir- 
culation, we earnestly request that you furnish the manuscript of the 
discourse for publication. 

We are, with great respect, 

yours triily, 
Charles L. Du Bois. Edw. D. Tracy. David Wolfe Brown. 

Theo. F. Sargent. John E. Carpenter. Wm. B. Bryan. 
John B. Wight. Dr. G. F. Johnston. A. W. Pentland. 

Rev. John Maclean. M. Wylie. A. B. Webb. 

John U. O'Meara. D. E. Cahill. Wm. C. O'Meara. 

Asa Whitehead. D. D. Smith. 



Washington, D. C, July 9, 1885. 

To Charles L. Du Bois, Edw. D. Tracy, 

David Wolfe Brown and others: 

Gentlemen: Your very flattering request of this date is before me. 
The discourse was prepared in the ordinary round of Pastoral duty, 
and with no thought whatever of publication. But I yield to your 
judgment, and place the manuscript at your disposal. 
With affectionate regard, 

B. Sunderland. 



-vey 



SERMON 



Ps. cxlvii. 20. " He hath not dealt so with any nation." 

The patriot Psalmist celebrates God's dealing with his 
people. Divine care of the nations is a sublime study. If, 
in some respects, the Hebrew story is unparalleled, yet the 
rise of this Republic is one of the greatest marvels. 

It took four hundred years to collect the elements of the 
nation which Moses led through the wilderness, and which 
Joshua planted in Canaan. It took five hundred years more 
of the theocracy to consolidate the tribes into a formal na- 
tional unity. The monarchy lasted a thousand years, but 
it was not a happy family. At the close of the third reign 
the tribes were sundered. Two kingdoms arose in the place 
of one. Ten tribes made Samaria their capital, two only 
adhered to the City of David. 

Seven hundred years B. C. Samaria was blotted from the 
map of nations. Two hundred years later the Jews were 
carried to Babylon. Five hundred years later still Judea 
became a Roman province and every vestige of Jewish 
nationality was swept away. 

At no time was the territory of the Hebrew monarchy 
larger than the State of Vermont. The life of the humbler 
classes was pastoral and agricultural. The arts were few and 
primitive. Religion was the engrossment and war the trade 
of men — yet the nation shone in oriental splendor — in gold 
and jewels and wealth of gorgeous apparel. The vast founda- 
tions of law and order and human civilization were laid. 
Prophets became the teachers of mankind, and the door 
was opened to still grander changes and possibilities of the 
future. 



When America was discovered, the family of nations had 
been re-cast. Africa had sunken in unknown darkness. 
Asia, the scene of the Dispersion and of the first Empires was 
drowsy in the sleep of ages. Europe alone gave signs of 
life, while yet a mighty incubus sat upon her breast. The 
Fourth Empire had gone in pieces. The Ten Kingdoms were 
instinct with forces ready to awake at the trumpet call of 
the Reformation. But Italy was still the provid seat of the 
Papal Church — Germany lay panting and dreaming at 
her feet. Austria and Spain, France and England were her 
favored daughters. The latter three contended for the 
leadership of the world. Russia, dark and gruesome, was 
rising in the North. The foot of the Turk was on the neck 
of Greece. 

The new found continent became the quest of imperial 
ambition. Exploration followed. Colonies were planted. 
The standards of Europe floated wherever the royal Powers 
could obtain a foot-hold. Finns, Swedes, Dutch, Germans, 
French, Spaniards, Irish, Scotch and English sought the 
Hesperian shores. Papists, Puritans, Quakers, Huguenots, 
Episcopalians, Presbyterians came hither during that col- 
onial period of almost three hundred years. The jealousies 
and wars of the Kingdoms for the possession of this country 
ended with the peace of Paris, 1768. The thirteen colonies 
became dependencies of the British crown. The Protestant 
religion was thus rooted in this soil. 

To a few years' oppression by King and Parliament we 
can trace the rejoicing of yesterday. Taxation without 
representation was the initial oi the contest. Acts of coercion 
and injustice precipitated the Declaration. The die was cast. 
Never was any nation so planted in prayers and tears ; 
never was God's hand more marked in the affairs of any 
people since the world began. 

It has been the fashion with sceptics of the present century 
to ascribe to Thomas Paine, who afterwards declared him- 



self a deist and impugned the bible, a reward of merit in 
the war of the Revolution, to which he is not justly entitled, 
and which will be lessened rather than increased in the 
judgment of posterity. He was'once a Quaker preacher of 
Thetford. But having had a checkered career, and finally 
spoiled his prospects at home, he came to the colonies as an 
adventurer, having obtained from Benjamin Franklin, then 
in London, a note of introduction to his son-in-law Richard 
Bache, of Philadelphia — at which city he arrived in Decem- 
ber, 177-i. His pamphlet entitled " Common Sense" was 
published January 10th, 1776, about thirteen months after his 
arrival. In this pamphlet he testifies that he has never 
met a man, either in Englandtor America, who believed 
that separation from the mother country would not come 
sooner or later. 

Abigail Adams, the first lady who occupied the White 
House, from the little farm at the foot of Penn Hill, wrote 
her husband at Philadelphia, in November, 1775, these 
words : 

"I could not join to-day in the petitions of our worthy 
pastor for reconciliation. Let us separate ; they are no lon- 
ger worthy to be our brethren. Let us renounce them, and 
instead of supplications, as formerly, for their prosperity and 
happiness, let us beseech the Almighty to blast their coun- 
sels and bring to naught all their devices." 

This noble woman, two months before " Common 
Sense" appeared, had voiced the sentiment which was 
quickening in the hearts of the colonists. Paine was sharp 
to see the drift of public opinion. He seized the opportu- 
nity to appeal to the religious faith oi the harassed people. 
He drew an argument from the Old Testament against 
monarchical government. This was the chief emphasis of 
his pamphlet: It proved to be a spark to fire the train 
already laid. I have no wish unjustly to detract from the 



6 

merit of any actor in that day of Revolution, but had he 
then insulted the colonies with a book, which he called 
the " Age of Reason " — finished among the scenes of " The 
French Reign of Terror" — and published seventeen years 
after the pamphlet " Common Sense," he would have been 
hissed into obscurity, by a people too thoroughly religious 
and too grandly in earnest to be trifled with or deceived 
by the flippant sophistry of Unbelief. 

The story of that great time will descend to the latest 
generations. The subjects of complaint were far difi'erent 
from those of the Egyptian bondage, and in the comparison 
not wholly intolerable. But it only goes to show the pro- 
gress of the sentiment of human freedom, fraternity, and 
equality, under the light of a restored Christianity, and that 
the eighteenth century of the Gospel of Jesus found men 
ready to resist oppression which, in the age of Moses, would 
have been deemed a fantasy'. 

Our fathers and mothers were the children of men who 
fought that mighty battle — and of the women on whose hearts 
the soldiers of Independence leaned for sympathy and cour- 
age. 

When the war was over and the Constitution adopted, the 
infant Republic stood upon this narrow strip of Atlantic sea 
coast from Maine to the Carolinas — three millions of people, 
in deVjt, battered, impoverished, exhausted by the long 
dcf^olation — but filled with the hopes of a splendid future, 
and ready for the last and greatest experiment of self-gov- 
ernment. Was there ever anything like it on the face of 
the earth ? Has God ever dealt so with any nation ? 

Wehave heard of many formsof government, but was there 
ever any human government that has prospered in a single 
century as this has ? This Republic is purely Democratic. 
The Greek and Roman Republics were aristocratic, giving 
rise to innumerable conflicts between patrician and plebeian, 
succeeded always by the sceptre and the crown. But here 



we have no hereditary titles ; no law of primogeniture ; no 
privileged nobility ; no feudal system ; no union of Church 
and State. All men are free and equal before the law. All 
the great offices are elective, to which citizens home-born 
may all aspire. The legalized forms of slavery have 
ceased forever. There remains but one relic of barbarism, 
foisted on the nation by a mockery of religion, and des- 
tined to perish with the delusion which gave it birth. 
In this country people of every language, race, religion or 
no religion, find a home ; — unless it be a Chinese influx, like 
a stone in the stomach, that cannot assimilate. Our public 
domain is far larger than the Roman Empire in its palmiest 
days. Our system of jurisprudence is a vast improvement 
on the legal customs of other times and of other lands. 

The schools of the Republic are one of its grandest feat- 
ures. Education is bound to be universal. The land already 
shines with the white light of intelligence diffused in every 
part. Illiteracy here is a doomed thing. The Press has a 
freedom of scope which it- enjoys in no other land on the 
face of the globe — and though it is often prostituted to the 
vilest purposes — though it reeks with falsehood till society 
finds vent in the amazement of Falstaff himself when he, 
not the most truthful of men, cries out, " How this world is 
given to lying!" Nevertheless it has a marvellous mission 
and is everywhere instinct with the spirit of information, 
and a vast educational power. Our resources are immense. 
The cities and towns, the great thoroughfares and water 
courses, the countless industries, the arts, the inventions, the 
mastery of the elements, the power of travel, of transporta- 
tion, and of inter-communication, the flashing of intelhgence, 
the literature, the science, the philosophy, and above all the 
religious spirit of our times — are the wonders of a civiliza- 
tion that seems only yet to be upon the threshold of its 
course. 

Our hundred years of national life is simply monu- 



mental. Almost the latest-born in the family of nations, our 
history has been a surprise to other people and to ourselves, 
at every step of our advancement. For many years the 
monarchists of Europe looked upon our Government as 
only a wild experiment that must end in failure. To all 
these animadversions the logic of events responds. In 
all our wars peace has come only to enrich us with new 
spoils. Would to God the soul of the nation were not stained 
with so many wrongs done to the Red man, who, in his turn 
has wreaked vindictive vengeance. Will a day of reckoning 
ever come ! 

In the last and greatest war, the world looked on in 
terror — some fearing and some gloating over the antici- 
pated catastrophe. The Republic, they said, had gone to 
pieces in the red sea of civil strife. What should we do 
with human bondage ? What with the national debt ? What 
with two millions of fighting men suddenly released from 
the bloody trade of war ? What with the negro race ? What 
with the fragments of shattered States? Time has already 
made reply. We are a single people — "Union and liberty now 
and forever,one and inseparable!" All men are free. The race 
question is settling itself The franchise will be maintained. 
The debt is being paid, The national credit never stood so 
high as at this moment. Our currency is the finest in the 
world. The States have been restored, — not a star blotted 
out, not a stripe effaced. Our armies have melted away into 
the arts of peace — -belted and spurred while the conflict raged, 
but when it was over, home-sick for the old faces and old 
places where they sported in childhood, and where tliey 
missed so many they would meet here no more. 

Our Government has been shocked and tested in other 
ways. Four Presidents have died in office, two by the in- 
visible hand of disease, two by assasination. They were 
fearful strokes, and smote home to the nation's heart. But 
the patience and the sym{)athy of the peo})le have simply 



9 

been sublime. In an elective government there will always 
be sectional interests and political parties, and with a people 
as mercurial and yet as wise as our own, it is one of the 
noblest characteristics that when the national suffrage has 
rendered its decree, all law abiding people immediately sub- 
mit as to the supreme fiat of the land— for we must never for- 
get that we may be of this section or of that, of this party 
or of that, but we are all Americans with a common pride 
in our institutions, and a common interest in their purity 
and prosperity. The silent transition of such vast pov/er 
from living hand to living hand — not as in m(marchies from 
the dead to the living — is it not wonderful? 

So the Providence of Grod has Ted us on; and what is it now 
that calls forth this amazing popular energy ? The problems 
of society are not all resolved. Individual hardship and 
perhaps class hardship there must be. No great policy is 
perfect yet. There are many questions that are taxing the 
highest genius of the nation. But the whole tendency of 
our national life is to grapple with the great existing evils, 
to look them squarely in the face, and make the charity 
and philanthrophy of Christ effectual in suppressing ig- 
norance and crime, idleness and vice, selfishness and pov- 
erty and misery of every form. This is the practical aim 
of Christianity. This is the end of that religion which 
more than any other influence has made us what Ave are, 
and which the Divine Founder designed should be the 
chief blessins: to men, women and children in all our 
generations! 

Yes, it is now more than ever the land of the bible and 
the sanctuarj^ — I wish I might add of the quiet sabbath — 
the day of rest — the one great landmark of the beneficence 
of the Almighty to His human creatures. We need this 
pause in the fever and tumult of our times. AVe need it for 
the repose of body and soul. We need it for a people whose 
life is fo intense, so exacting, so consuming. 



10 

And this is the theatre that God has given us — a land 
where human nature is under a mighty pressure — and all 
there is of it is turned inside out. There is no more any 
privacy in human conduct. It is the day of judgment for 
every human being. We know the worst and the best of 
human society. We know its defects and its excellencies, and 
there is a grand process of development going on to estab- 
lish mankind more firmly in material comfort, morality and 
a spiritual religion. 

Here is our country planted in the breast of the oceans, 
cut oft' from " entangling alliances," isolated, independent, 
magnificent, sublime. We believe it is the point of sup- 
port — the fulcrum of God's lever to lift up the world. In 
the family of nations the Republic stands unique and un- 
paralled — a marvellous creation, an agent of immense force 
through the prodigious influence of its silent example. 

A hundred years ago the eastern half of Asia was shut 
away from the occidental world — buried amid ancient cus- 
toms which had nothing in common with the advancement 
of modern civilization. India was already in the grasp of 
British power. The Persians and their mountain neigh- 
bors were hedged about with giant forests and desert soli- 
tudes. Over the western half of the continent the Crescent 
was already paling. The wars with Russia in the north and 
France and England in the south, were wasting the Moslem 
strength and preparing "the sick man" for his last transi- 
tion. In Europe Imperialism and the Hierarchy had 
reached their culmination. The Reformation had cloven 
in twain the Papal kingdoms. Spain had lost her prestige. 
Russia was looming into gigantic proportions round the en- 
tire Arctic circle. The Low countries were the home of the 
Dutch Republic — and the British Empire had become Pro- 
testant under a constitutional monarchy. The German 
Principalities were seething with intestine commotions, 
Austria adhered with a fatal devotion to the Papal cause. 



11 

Poland was dismembered ; Prussia emasculated ; France, 
on the eve of an explosion; and the lesser countries, trem- 
bling with convulsions which shook the continent from 
center to circumference. In little Switzerland — that eagle's 
nest— the egg of Eepublican liberty was laid. Calvin 
was the champion of doctrines which bore their fruit in 
the colonial Congress. Lonely, benighted, down-trodden 
Africa sent forth a loud and bitter cry, when all around her 
coast the slave ships hovered to take their cargoes of quiver- 
ing human flesh. 

South America and Mexico were dominated by the west- 
ern nations of Europe. Louisiana belonged to France, Can- 
ada to England, Alaska to Russia. The islands were shrouded 
in obscurity. Australia had just received the first English 
colony at New South Wales. This was the map of the na- 
tions a century ago when the old bell at Philadelphia tolled 
out the Declaration on the ears of a people driven to these 
western wilds by the storms of religious persecution, and 
bent now on independence and freedom to worship God ! 

And what have we seen in this family of nations since 
then ? Thomas Paine, while a member of the French As- ' 
sembly predicted that Europe would be Republican in seven 
years. Twenty years later Napoleon said that in half a 
century Europe would be either all Cossack or all Eepubli- 
can. Neither of these men were accurate as to the time, 
but certainly the secret forces of humanity in one form or 
other are waking up and preparing the way for a new order 
of things. Immense changes have already transpired. At 
the bottom of these changes lies the foundation truth of the 
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. We are 
finding out that the world has been governed too much — 
that the masses have been trampled down by the few — that 
true nobility is not by titled descent — that prince and peas- 
ant, white men, yellow men, red men, and black men were 
made of one blood in all the earth — and that distinctions 



12 

of rank ought to spring from merit rattier than from birth 
— that intellect is .better than brawn and wisdom than coffers 
of gold ; that the mastery of mind over matter excels the 
mastery of matter over mind ; that the arts of peace are 
far grander than the arts of war ; that political economy 
is not simply the excise, revenue, customs, tariffs, taxes and 
the expenses and disbursements of a government resting 
upon the pillars of physical power, but a science of indus- 
try, frugality, morality and intelligence ; that the protec- 
tion and happiness of society means that the strong shall 
' help the weak, that human misfortune shall create houses 
of refuge and fields of labor, and that the miseries of men 
shall awaken the sacred charities of humanity. 

Going along with these things are equal laws, liberal 
legislation, pure administration, incorruptible courts, per- 
sonal freedom, a fair chance in the race of life, social order, 
with all the grand and generous hopes, the noble aspira- 
tions and thrilling possibilities which give to men and 
women the sacred motives of activity in every great de- 
partment of human enterprise. 

Prejudice and prescription have amazing tenacity. Re- 
form of old abuses and deeply rooted errors evermore 
marches slowly, but thanks be to God, will surely arrive at 
! last. We have discovered this prime fact in human his- 
j tory, that whenever any great step is about to be taken 
i in human progress, God has his man ready, and there at his 
post we find him ! What have we seen in Europe during 
this hundred years? — the two Napoleon empires, the revolu- 
tions of '48 ; the cessation of Russian serfdom ; Italy unified ; 
the Papacy bereft of temporal power ; Germany in the as- 
cendant; France attempting republican government — Eng- 
land shaken with home pains and colonial convulsions, put- 
ting forth immense power in many directions — forcing opium 
on China, blowing Sepoys from the cannon's mouth, grasping 
territory in every quarter of the globe, adding India to the 



13 

empire, making reluctant concessions of free-trade and suf- 
frage, while Ireland like a burning fever is raging at her 
heart. No country has been so powerfully affected by this, 
our silent American example, as that Mother land from 
which the colonies were separated a century ago. In this 
example the Hberal party now dominant in the British 
islands has found its chief support and keenest inspiration. 
The monarchy is but a name. The government of England 
is already an aristocratic Eepublic. It will become more 
and more a democratic government. The nations cannot 
behold the example of this American Union without being 
transformed into the same image. That fearful, desperate, 
diabolical protest against absolute despotism, which men 
call Nihilism, is batan insane cry of the oppressed for the lib- 
erty conferred in this Eepublic. Human souls, mad with 
the wrongs and outrages of ages, forgetting God and in- 
spirited of Satan, seek clandestine vengeance on the power 
that holds them down. Alas, they have never studied 
the religious fervor and subhme trust in God in which 
our Republic was born. 

But not alone in Europe is our example teaching the na- 
tions. Like the Queen of Sheba seeking to know the glory 
of Solomon — kings and emperors from distant regions — am- 
bassadors from the oldest governments existing upon earth, 
have come in person among us to study our institutions, and 
bear away into remote countries, the light of our intelligence 
and the life of our pursuits. Already the moral sun of lib- 
erty, which broke upon the world in the Hall of Indepen- 
dence, has begun to rise over the night of oriental peoples. 
During this time we have planted a Republic on the west- 
ern coast of Africa, and established a marine police to pre- 
vent the recurrence of the infamous slave trade. But above 
all and beyond all our Republic has done for the ameliora- 
tion of the world, are the American Christian Missions now 
planted in every quarter of the globe, and breathing forth 



14 

on the tribes, long perishing in darkness, the life-giving 
spirit of that Almighty Being who inspired our Revolution 
and gave us this mighty christianized civil State — the 
standing miracle of the nations. 

Sometimes, when I think of it all, a vision rises before 
me, something like what I imagine was the vision of a pro- 
phet in the ancient time. 

I see a form, bloody and pale at first, ascending on the 
face of the earth. There is carnage at its appearance. I 
hear the shoutings of captains and the thunder of battle, and 
where the death storm falls and the iron hail, I hear the 
moans of the dying ; the faces grow white and the grave 
gathers over them. At length I see unnumbered mounds 
and the dark cypress waving above them. Then I see a 
procession of mourners — the widows and iair brides of the 
dead crape-clad — bewailing the slaughter, and millions of 
tears watering the flowers they have planted in the places 
of sepulture. But they are proud in their desolation for their 
heroes have died bravely. Then far away the dun clouds of 
war are wafted sullenly, and the hoarse raven dips his 
beak no more in the blood of the slain. Whereat I see the 
form first rising, as it were, of a woman full of charms — ris- 
ing upward still more beautiful and majestic — and there is a 
garment of light about her, and she has a golden girdle as 
of a constitution, and her feet are sandaled with declara- 
tions, and a wreath of laws is on her brow, and a mighty 
sword is in her uplifted hands, and scales as it had been of 
justice. And power is given to her and great attraction. 
New motions of life begin to stir among the human masses, 
for a divine prowess seems flowing down upon them from 
her presence. And stars become the symbols of her dominion 
to prophesy of the future, as the stripes are of her struggles 
telling of the sorrows of the past. And the people hail her 
as they would a great deliverance ; and mighty plaudits and 
greetings of fervent joy ascend to heaven. 



15 

Then I saw the genius of that form beating as the life 
blood beats in the heart of a giant when a large work is to 
be clone ; and I saw how all the older forms of government 
paled before this fair daughter of the nations ; how ancient 
laws and constitutions bowed their reverend heads, and all 
the fame of antiquity did obeisance. The sons of science, 
the sages and ministers of learning, and all the men of 
might, were filled with admiration. And still that form 
rose higher with herculean strength, and brighter with the 
beams of angelic hope, and geography had to be re-written 
to correct her boundaries, and political arithmetic and 
economy had to change their data to give a wider scope 
to her problem of human destiruy. Oppression trembled 
before her, and the infernal arts of conquest and subver- 
sion were paralvzed beneath her glance — and there away 
in the van of universal liberty and light, law and religion, 
strode the form of the Powerful — a Titan strength pulsing 
in her breast — the smile of the Almighty impressed upon 
her brow. The children gleesome saluted her with morn- 
ing benisons, and the old men left her their benediction 
when they died. And as that form fairer and mightier 
rose upon my gaze, I wept and clapped my hands for joy, 
for I discerned in its greatness the spirit of my country! 
Amen. 



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